Page 41 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Maggie

Benton Avenue

Maggie feels numb as she walks through her front door, then pushes it closed with a creak that seems to echo through the small house. The drugs are gone. She lost them. Whatever happens next is going to be all her fault.

A part of her wants to tell Dean the truth. To get it over with quickly, come clean and plead for his forgiveness. But a larger part of her is afraid of how he’ll react.

She pads into the bedroom silently, like a ghost moving through her own home, and finds Dean pacing the floors, his hands running through his thick dark hair over and over again.

He stops immediately when he sees her, zeroing in on her with laser focus. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I had to run some errands,” she lies. She sees then that his pupils are dilated to the size of dinner plates. It’s like looking into two endless black voids. Maggie finds it unnerving.

“You had to run errands now? When we’re in the middle of a fucking shitstorm?” He doesn’t wait for Maggie’s reply, just barrels ahead, the words leaping manically from his tongue. “It doesn’t matter. I figured out how to solve our little problem. I came up with a plan and it’s fucking brilliant.”

“A plan?”

“Yeah. See, next week is Halloween!”

“I know, but—”

He’s excited now, almost salivating at the thought of it.

“We’re gonna hit the houses on the other side of town.

And Halloween is the perfect time to do it.

Everyone will be out of their houses trick-or-treating and shit, and we’ll have the perfect cover to be walking around the neighborhood ringing doorbells. See? I told you it’s brilliant.”

“You want to rob people’s houses? Dean, we—”

“Those rich fuckers uptown have had this coming for a long time. Haven’t I been saying that?

Didn’t I tell you I’d find a way to settle the score?

” Beads of sweat gather at his hairline as he pounds his fist into his palm.

“And I did it. I figured out how to get back at those pricks and find the money we need to get us out of this shit with Mike at the same time.” He smiles, a contorted grin that elicits a spasm of fear in Maggie’s chest.

“Okay,” she says. Because she knows there’s no use arguing with him when he’s like this.

He’s already fixated on the idea. She’ll just have to wait for him to sober up to try to talk some sense into him.

She thinks of the jam jar, so full now that it’s getting difficult to screw on the lid.

Soon this won’t have to be her life anymore. Soon she’ll be free.

Dean grinds his teeth, his jaw rocking. “What about those people you work for?”

“What about them?”

“They live up on that fancy cul-de-sac, the one with all the big houses. They have anything worth taking?”

Maggie swallows hard. “No, they—”

“I’m sure they do,” Dean continues, nodding as the idea spreads in his mind like poison. “Jewelry and shit they wouldn’t even miss.”

Maggie shakes her head vigorously. She can’t let him rob the Sullivans.

They’ve always treated her so well, and their house feels like a sanctuary to her, more of a home than the one she lives in.

She hates the thought of Dean invading their nice, clean space, dirtying it, taking things that his fingers have no business touching.

She imagines him picking up one of baby Lila’s teddy bears, his stained nails digging into the soft plush, and it makes her feel queasy.

“No,” she says. “You can’t.”

Dean rounds on her, his eyes flashing with rage. “I can’t ? And exactly why can’t I, Maggie?”

Dean takes a step toward her, and Maggie feels her teeth start to chatter in her skull. “They have…cameras,” she tries feebly.

“And you’ll know how to get around them.”

“But we could get caught, and—”

“And you work in their house. If they find you there, you just say you left your keys behind or something.”

“No, I—”

She could call the police, give them an anonymous tip. That’s possible, isn’t it? But what if Dean were to find out it was her?

“You what, Maggie? Because, honestly, I’d love to fucking know how we got into this mess in the first place.”

Maggie can sense the tide of Dean’s high turning, the early manic euphoria giving way to aggression, paranoia.

“Did you take the stash for yourself? Maybe you thought you could cut me out of the deal, do this on your own.”

“Dean, no. Of course not. I wouldn’t.” She backs away from him, small tentative steps.

“Well, I think you would. First the product goes missing on your watch and now you’re telling me that you don’t want me saving both our fucking necks.

Like you’re more worried about the rich assholes you work for than you are about me.

They don’t care about you. You know that, don’t you? You’re just the hired help.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then tell me what it is, Maggie. Because I know you’re lying to me. And if you don’t tell me the truth right now, maybe I’ll just have to go over there tonight.”

Maggie imagines little Carter waking up in the middle of the night, how terrified he would be to find Dean ransacking his beautiful, peaceful home.

She imagines Lila crying and Dean, in a coke-fueled rage, shaking her to shut her up.

She imagines the look of horror on Ms. Sullivan’s face when she learns that Maggie brought this monster to their doorstep. This is all Maggie’s fault.

“I—I lost them. The drugs.” The truth spills out of her before she can stop it. “There was a cop, and I panicked, so I stashed them behind a dumpster, but when I went back to get them, they were gone, and I’m so sorry, I never meant—”

Dean’s fist collides with her ribs, knocking the wind from her lungs. Maggie doubles over, her arms wrapping around her body protectively, but Dean’s knee slams into the underside of her chin. Maggie feels her jaw snap shut, tastes the warm blood filling her mouth.

She falls to the floor and curls into a ball while Dean kicks her over and over again, the toe of his boot repeatedly crashing into her ribs, her spine, the back of her skull. Maggie whimpers with pain as his foot finds her kidney and she’s overcome with nausea.

She doesn’t plead with him to stop. She knows by now that begging will only prolong her suffering. Instead, she covers her face, protecting herself where she can, until her husband grows tired of hurting her.

Dean is out of breath when he’s finally through, panting as he bends over, bracing his hands on his knees to glare down at Maggie, bloodied on the floor at his feet.

“Look at me,” he demands.

Maggie turns her head with great effort, her vision unfocused, blood and tears stinging her eyes as she looks up into Dean’s glowering face. How can I ever have thought he was beautiful?

“You will never lie to me again,” he says, the words curling out from between his clenched teeth. “Now, is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“I’m…leaving you,” Maggie manages, her voice nothing more than a breathy whisper but there nonetheless. She hates that it took her so long to find it that she barely has one left to use.

Dean turns. He rummages through a drawer for a moment, then pulls something from it, holding it out for Maggie to see.

Maggie blinks slowly, fighting for consciousness as her mind struggles to process what Dean is holding: an empty jam jar.

A rictus grin creaks slowly across his face like cracking ice. “You have nowhere to go.”